What's your "workhorse"?

[SuperBigD60]

do you have craft file ?

i made alote of shuttles and i need alote bigger tanks to make it

The Crew Shuttle

The Cargo Shuttle

mods:

B9

Taverio's pizza and aerospace

mechjeb

KWrocketry

quantum struts

and like I said, most likely you'll need FAR

[Kulebron]

Very convenient booster, with 2 stages for lightweight payloads and 3 stages for those heavier.

[SRV Ron]

Updated the small probe launcher with SRBs so that it can conduct landing of probes on Mun or Minmus. The original version could only place them into orbit.

[csiler2]

This baby has been getting the lion's share of my attention lately:

-snip-

I'll probably go back to refining this monster at some point:

-snip-

Nice Design. What parts are you using? I really dig the LM and LVs

For stuff, I use this shuttle:

-snip-

I've yet to successfully land it, but I've yet to reach the limit of what it can bring into LKO, due to the fact I can't find a way to stuff more than about 60 tons in the bay.

For kerbals into LKO:

-snip-

Basically the same, but smaller.

This takes two pilots and 12 passengers int LKO

Both will only reliably work with FAR

Those shuttles are HOT and Sexy!

[Spooks]

spacex like lancer 1.25m singel 5+t 3 stack 20+t

[Kerbocracy]

Nineteen asparagused mainsails that separate in pairs. I've used this to lift a fuel node composed of 4 orange tanks with two RCS nodes into LKO. In this pic it's attached to a smaller fuel node. The central orange tank in the lifter can act as a dockable tug if it has remaining fuel; or else it just disposes of itself in the ATMO when payload is delivered.

[AcidSludge]

This is the latest version of the Komarov, my "workhorse" - or, as I call it - "the rocket-thingie that I manage to orbit and do spacey stuff with most of the time".

I'm relatively new to KSP, I play it for 3 days now, and after two days of shooting rockets in all directions very aimlessly (Jeb is in an EVA orbiting the sun at the moment) I got the hang of what and where to do (I assume).

The Komarov-Series was planned with Kerbins moons in my mind, and works as intended - mostly.

Missions with the Komarov so far:

1. Unmanned -> Hey, I got to the Mun, and it is coming close very fast, aaah how beautiful it is, hey look at that hills - kaboom, Mun has a new crater now.

2. Unmanned -> More gently approach, the surface came earlier as I expected, a lot of debris, but promising.

3. Manned -> I got it, I got it, I gooooot iiiiiit, ah ****e, the lander flipped over, but the Kerbal named Bob is still alive!

4. Unmanned -> Training for a "Bob, hang on, we're getting you home someday"-Mission, landed the probe smoothly and returned it safely.

5. Manned -> Bobs Rescue, managed to land 5km away from him, got him and the lander safely back!

6 Unmanned -> Minmus-Mission, landed very smoothly, done a lot of science-stuff, went home and noticed that I forgot the parachutes for some reason - tsunami after the splashdown.

[AcidSludge]

doublepost, sorry for that

[SkyHook]

That would be my Eurobird. Anything mundane, small, or otherwise easy goes up in my eurobird. Anything bigger or special goes up in the Ursa.

[Wampa842]

I have multiple workhorses, all named after gods and heroes from Kalevala.

My general purpose light lifter, Ahti, is a stock lifter for RT2 satellites and small payloads, with just enough punch to put them on a stable kerbisynchronous orbit. Mk.2 can put the sat to an orbit around Minmus.

The lifter I use the most consists of two parts. I call it Ilmarinen, after the first space station I launched with it. It is made of KW Rocketry parts.

The lower stage uses six 2.5m Maverick engines in an asparagus config and a central 2.5m Griffon engine. They are aided by six SRBs, one between each pair of wings. Since they are so inconveniently placed, I can't commence gravity turn until about t+30 seconds after liftoff. If I do, the jettisoned boosters might break off an LFO tank.

By the time I get my apogee to 75km, I usually have two third of the fuel left in the last pair of radial tanks, and a full central tank. Despite the enormous thrust, after jettisoning the radial engines, the central engine is barely strong enough to circularize the trajectory. Depending on the payload, I have to maintain a 20-40° angle from the prograde marker as to prevent premature reentry and the rocket going Crashy McSplodey. I usually have around 1/4 of the fuel left in the main tank by the time it lifts the perigee above the atmosphere.

The orbital stage consists of four 1.25m radial engines, a 2.5m high Isp engine, and four radially attached retroengines to slow down the payload for orbital rendezvous.

Ilmatar is fundamentally the same, only made with 3.75m parts.

Ilmarinen with a ridiculously huge payload:

Although not a workhorse, my experimental lifter, Joukahainen, is an overcomplicated monstrosity. It has four engines in an asparagus configuration, each of which is an asparagus config of four engines, making the total amount of engines 21. To my complete and utter surprise, it actually works!

Some pictures of what it looks like (still in construction): http://imgur.com/a/xTbI5

Edited December 7, 2013 by Wampa842

[agentKmurph]

I have several. My most used is probably my A1C-60 booster (Asparagus series 1 revision C - 6000 kg lift capacity). Wonderful little guy for getting landers, large probes, and small ships to Kerbin's moons or into a parking orbit for rendezvous with an interplanetary booster.

And of course my trusty A2B-360 booster. Great for lifting 36,000 kg into parking orbit.

Another favorite workhorse is my Jaguar low gravity lander. I've used this thing or some very close derivative for landing on Mun, Minmus, Ike, Dres, Moho, and Eeloo. Also served as the inspiration for my two-man Duna lander.

Lastly, my general purpose "Singapore" space station, pictured here with the remnants of an interplanetary booster attached to the bottom.

Edited December 7, 2013 by agentKmurph

[Dispatcher]

For Satellites and small - large station parts, i use a space shuttle

For everything else, I use my Pegasus (The Bottom 2 engine sets):

I'm not seeing your images.

[Spatzimaus]

That's easy. My workhorse is the Brick-21:

(Ignore the mobile refinery attached to its front; that's just the payload.)

It's a 5000-ton heavy lift vehicle, made of 21 3.75m stacks from KW Rocketry. (I've also got the Brick-29 and Brick-37, for larger payloads.)

They're not an asparagus; the stacks are linked together with wing components and struts to form a rigid block of boosters. It's an SSTO, so I don't have to screw around with staging, and the fact that the 21 stacks' tops are all level with each other means that it's really easy to attach awkward payloads to the top, since you can get plenty of lateral support with struts. It's got a TWR of about 1.9 at launch, so I have to throttle down a bit once I get to about 3000m, but other than that it's pathetically easy to use and extremely stable. It has an unmanned control node, batteries, and a few solar panels, so after separation it's still fully controllable; I use this to safely de-orbit it after separation, to prevent any debris in orbit.

It can get a 300-ton payload (the pictured refinery) into a stable 80km orbit with about 500m/s of delta-V to spare (more than enough to de-orbit the Brick afterwards), which means I can probably manage a 500-ton payload (but larger payloads are what the -29 and -37 are for; the -37 carries my 870-ton space station to orbit). Or, it can boost straight up to get the payload almost entirely out of the Kerbin SOI for easy missions to Duna/Jool/Eve.

The thing is, it's so easy to use that I now use it as a subassembly for lifting far smaller payloads, instead of designing a special booster for each rocket. Here it is carrying a 30-ton rover destined for Mun:

(The rover has VTOL rockets on it, and flew the rest of the way on its own.)

It's complete overkill, of course; if I had time, I'd redesign to stick four or five rovers on a single Brick-21. Alternately, I'm thinking of stripping this down to make a Brick-9 for payloads of this size, but honestly there's not much reason to bother; as I said, the -21 is really easy to use and there's just no downside to the extra power, beyond sluggish steering once the rockets turn off.

[Brapness]

I suppose these used to be my workhorses.

The Ares-1 lander (and variations); landed on Gilly, the Mun, Minmus, Ike, Duna and Dres over its long program. An elegantly simple design, but it had one slight flaw that led to the Ares program being cancelled.

[Firov]

Anymore, the closest thing I have to a "workhorse" would probably be my NASA style space shuttle. It can lift an orange tank (~40 tons) into LKO while still having around 500 delta-V for maneuvering once there. Then it can glide safely back to base on re-entry, even with a payload.

It's surprisingly well behaved on ascent even after dropping the solid rocket boosters, and has good flight/glide characteristics (~7/1 glide ratio) on reentry, as long as you don't try any rapid turns below ~100m/s.

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[Tanner Rawlings]

i have the atlas family (1-5) pretty much the same except for the boosters and the case with the 5th (it has a extra tank)